I think Sassy is being very reasoned and rational about this and is taking appropriate steps. Those posters who have urged Sassy to forgive and move on may wish to read the story just above. Gambling is a lifelong addiction. This man will always have a gambling tendency and will always put it before the welfare of his family. He cannot be trusted ever again. Sassy's task now is to mitigate or eliminate the risk that this will destroy her future and that of her children. Mitigation is preferable but elimination will not be possible without severing all financial links.

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I think Sassy is being very reasoned and rational about this and is taking appropriate steps. Those posters who have urged Sassy to forgive and move on may wish to read the story just above. Gambling is a lifelong addiction. This man will always have a gambling tendency and will always put it before the welfare of his family. He cannot be trusted ever again. Sassy's task now is to mitigate or eliminate the risk that this will destroy her future and that of her children. Mitigation is preferable but elimination will not be possible without severing all financial links.

In post #3 I said:

Yes, I am suspicious and judgmental. That doesn't mean I'm wrong.

In two posts (not just one) following your question about Mr S having a gambling problem, the OP insisted he is not a gambler. This insistence and her painting him as someone out of the Waltons were factors in my feeling the OP was being hard on him. If he has an addiction, she has a lot more to deal with than his investment losses.

Good luck to you, Sassy.

__________________

__________________“Would you like an adventure now, or would you like to have your tea first?” J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

I think Sassy is being very reasoned and rational about this and is taking appropriate steps. Those posters who have urged Sassy to forgive and move on may wish to read the story just above. Gambling is a lifelong addiction. This man will always have a gambling tendency and will always put it before the welfare of his family. He cannot be trusted ever again. Sassy's task now is to mitigate or eliminate the risk that this will destroy her future and that of her children. Mitigation is preferable but elimination will not be possible without severing all financial links.

In post #3 I said:

Yes, I am suspicious and judgmental. That doesn't mean I'm wrong.

Yes, gambling does not have to be done in Vegas.... that is where a lot of people fail to recognize the problem...

Putting all of your investments in a gold option is gambling... it can be nothing else... sure, you might have won big, but that is what gamblers want to do... but to Sassy... even if he did, he might have lost it all on the next gamble... winning has a way of making gamblers bet more the next time...

Let me give another example of my BIL... I went with him to Vegas when I was really young... I was doing my own thing and stopped by to see how he was doing... he was UP $250,000... so I went upstairs to eat and watch some TV.... went down to see him again and he had lost all of the $250,000 and was now in the hole an additional $50,000.... he did not know when to quit... there is no way to prove this, but he always said that he was ahead on Vegas... he might have been, but I doubt it... we do not know how much of that $5 mill his company owed was gambled away...

And I did not "insist" that he was not a gambler. I simply said he wasn't and, based on the one other time of this happening--so now twice in 20 years--I wouldn't even have considered it a gambling issue. But twice starts to make it a pattern and so now it must be explored.

As for me saying he can pass for one of The Waltons characters. He CAN. And in no other area in his life does he have a renegade, rebellious, risky nature. Boring as hell. For god's sake, his favorite singer is Neil Diamond--that's just wrong for a 40-year-old man!!!

I find it quite amazing that seemingly so many people on here have never made a bad mistake in their lives......

__________________
Consult with your own advisor or representative. My thoughts should not be construed as investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results (love that one).......:)

I find it quite amazing that seemingly so many people on here have never made a bad mistake in their lives......

FD, like all of us, I make mistakes all the time, but I am accountable, I own up and learn from them. The only bad mistakes I have made involved trusting people when, in retrospect, I shouldn't have. I have learnt to question everything, look for patterns in the data, and call a spade a spade. Sorry if that comes across as being harsh. When people earn my trust, I am the best friend in the world. If you wish to discuss my character further, we should take the discussion offline as it is not germane to the focus of this very important thread. As I seem to be causing a distraction, I will refrain from further comment on this thread. Feel free to put me on your ignore list.

A number of woman posters here are quite adamant that Sassy should throw her husband out on his ear because they view him as a pathological liar or a financial adulterer.

AS a female poster who has posted on this thread I do want to clear the air on one thing.

I have never said that Sassy should throw her husband out. It is not for me to say what she should do. She has far more information on this situation and on her husband than I do. So she must and should make her own decision. She also knows more about herself and whether she can either regain her trust of her husband or, even, whether having trust in his word is even important to her.

Some of the things are below that I said that I think make it clear I was not trying to tell Sassy what to do. Instead, I was talking about how I would feel in that situation:

Quote:

The determination on his motivations and how he feels is not for me to decide. I just know how I would feel if it was my husband.

Quote:

If it was my husband... But me? I wouldn't want to be married to that person.

Quote:

And, if it was me, I would find it very difficult to stay married to someone I didn't trust. Of course, it isn't me. So I fully understand that Sassy may feel differently and knows far more about her situation than I do.

Anyhow, aside from the financial suggestions (which I don't have much of a feel for), I would suggest (yes, suggest) that Sassy start to understand the problems and potiental problems that living with a gambling addicted person brings.

We do not have statements mailed anymore. They're all online. I have the user name/passwords for all of them except this big one, so I know what the rest look like.

From the outside of the aquarium...

If you are a joint tenant on the "big one", you have the legal right to see a statement. If you are not a joint tenant, then you cannot.

I would suggest calling the toll free number for the company managing the account and having a duplicate statement emailed to your personal email.

Ooops...I did not realize that the thread had this many posts. I am currently reading the previous ones.
UPDATE: Ok, I read most of the thread. I have to say I agree with Meadbh's initial reaction and subsequent posts.
I personally would not be able to forgive this. Using one's own "mad money" to speculate is one thing.
Using the family savings, and not consulting the 2nd party (Mrs), is just too much.

I sincerely hope this turns out well for you and your kids.

__________________
"All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them." - Walt Disney

Wow. I read the whole thread. Sassy, I do hope things end well for you. Moving forward you've done the right things taking control of the finances. Also consider a IRS stock loss that carries over year to year to be an asset not a liability. Your loss offsets your future gains.

Wow. I read the whole thread. Sassy, I do hope things end well for you. Moving forward you've done the right things taking control of the finances. Also consider a IRS stock loss that carries over year to year to be an asset not a liability. Your loss offsets your future gains.

I also read the entire thread and share your admiration for the way Sassy is handling this setback. I hope everything turns out for the best.

Reflecting on this from my personal perspective as a DH who manages our family's finances, I think there are some real lessons to be learned. In 2008 it didn't take a husband recklessly gambling away his family's fortune in order to suffer severe, and possibly fatal, damage to one's nest egg. I personally managed to lose $150,000 without even trying very hard, simply by continuing to invest more money in stocks as they sank like a stone. I knew in my heart it was the "right" thing to do, but at the time I had no idea if and when the stock market crash would end. Things could have ended up a lot like the Great Depression, when the DJIA lost 85% of its value between 1929 and 1933, and took 20 years to recover. If things had played out like that, I would have suffered losses similar to Sassy's husband and would have needed to sit down with my wife and let her know of our changed circumstances. I can't imagine, though, trying to cover up the losses for five years. That's a breach of trust that goes way beyond making dumb investment decisions.

So, ideally try to involve DW in all important financial decisions, have an agreement in place about how much risk is too much, communicate clearly after major setbacks, and be humble enough to admit that adverse markets can completely derail even the smartest investors.

I agree that this thread and the OP's unfolding story is just WOW. I'm sure you'd get 10-15 minutes of fame as a news story of personal finance, but at least people on this forum are not as brutal in criticizing the OP and her husband as the masses would be commenting on Yahoo, MSN, etc. articles (I don't waste time reading them though except skimming a few).

It seems easy to offer advice when you're not in the same shoes. I'll refrain from that....it's way too complicated to deal with emotions. OTOH, just to put in the perspective at least it's a paper loss, not the loss of health or other worse scenarios. Just yesterday I read a long story of the family that has a severly autistic child in the MONEY magazine (that might be found on the CNN.money site probably)....I just compared these two stories in my head...Sassy, you'll get better if you keep your attitude as is. I know I know when life deals you a pile of muck nobody else's problems seem worse than your own.

Now with the money part. You haven't mentioned it, but since your DH is agreeable, I'd become a control freak from now on...Well, you setting up new passwords and getting access to all the accounts indicates that you're going to sit in the driver's seat from now on. Hopefully your husband won't be able to guess the passwords, but you'll have them in an "open it when I'm dead" letter (no clue where to hide it, maybe at your parents until they leave this world).
I'd also run, if you haven't yet, annual credit reports for both of you, to make sure everything is kosher in your credit histories. It's free once a year. If you haven't done this in the past, I'd do all three companies at once and then I'd alternate one report from separate companies every 4 months so it's free to you.

Since you describe your DH as a guy who likes to live high on the hog, but he also agrees you to take control of the finances, I'd look at his paystub to verify that his net pay is deposited in the account you check. I know that you can request your employer to deposit to a few accounts instead of one. Because of trust issues between you two now, you want to make sure you start clean and fresh. Then give him an allowance or something, because to be cut off from money cold turkey might have adverse consequences.

Also, I still think that your family needs life insurance and it sounded that you haven't it. I never thought about time limitations of when to die after getting a term-life insurance policy...this is just a note to myself, not to prompt suicidal thoughts for your husband again.

I guess that's all from me. It sounded that your husband earns a healthy paycheck so maybe now he needs a stricter diet to pull you all up and going again.

One practical suggestion that I don't remember seeing earlier in this thread is to try to position your assets in order to take maximum advantage of your capital loss carryover. If I'm understanding your situation correctly, you must have hundreds of thousands of dollars in capital losses on your tax return. At the current rate of $3,000 per year deduction from ordinary income, it figures to take you a couple hundred years to fully exhaust your capital losses. For all practical puposes, the vast majority of your capital loss figures to be unused during your lifetime, unless you have future capital gains in addition to the $3,000 per year deduction.

That strongly suggests that you should be holding a sizable amount of stocks and/or stock mutual funds in taxable accounts. As you work to rebuild your savings, I would put as much as you reasonably can into taxable accounts and deemphasize tax deferred savings. Your unique situation with massive capital loss carryover means that you shouldn't need to be too concerned about paying capital gains tax ever again.

Sassy - I don't have any advice to offer as I have read through this thread and there has been much said already. You come across as very insightful and I hope that you will keep us in the forum updated as you go forward. I am sure you will fully recover from this financial nightmare. I wish the best for you and your family, especially the kids.

I am certain that when your kids are older and starting to earn their own money you can use your own personal experience, without laying blame on anyone, that investing must be done prudently and for the ;long not short term strategy.

One practical suggestion that I don't remember seeing earlier in this thread is to try to position your assets in order to take maximum advantage of your capital loss carryover. If I'm understanding your situation correctly, you must have hundreds of thousands of dollars in capital losses on your tax return. At the current rate of $3,000 per year deduction from ordinary income, it figures to take you a couple hundred years to fully exhaust your capital losses. For all practical puposes, the vast majority of your capital loss figures to be unused during your lifetime, unless you have future capital gains in addition to the $3,000 per year deduction.

That strongly suggests that you should be holding a sizable amount of stocks and/or stock mutual funds in taxable accounts. As you work to rebuild your savings, I would put as much as you reasonably can into taxable accounts and deemphasize tax deferred savings. Your unique situation with massive capital loss carryover means that you shouldn't need to be too concerned about paying capital gains tax ever again.

I would agree with this to a point....

You do not want to lose any matching contributions by not investing in a 401(k)....

The loss is a sunk cost... IOW, don't make a decision to try and take advantage of the loss carry forward that would not be a good decision in the long run... If it were me, I would still want to put money in a ROTH... mutual funds give off dividends and they are taxable in the current year... no loss carry forward to take this sting away.... as tax laws exist today, ALL earnings on this is tax free..

Finally, I would also want to compare my current tax bracket with the one I think I will be in when retired... if I am in the 28% tax bracket and will be in the 15% or less when retired.... I would rather save big tax money today and not worry about that loss....

Now, if none of these things are an issue for her.... sure, invest away in taxable accounts and use that loss up...

Sassy -
I wish you all the best in rebuilding the trust and working through this issue. It sounds like you've got a solid start to identifying the scope of the problem.

A relative of my husband was in a similar situation - she was a SAHM with 6 kids, he had a blue collar union job. It was enough to support the family... but not his gambling. His brother was also a gambler - so they'd go to the tracks or casino's together. When he blew most of their savings she stepped in. From that point forward (this was the early 1970's) she would receive his paycheck and hand him back cash for the week. She paid all the bills before and after. If he needed a bigger purchase than the spending money - they discussed it (as should be done in any marriage IMO) and budgeted for it. She also went to work at that point, to make sure they'd be able to pay off the mortgage, help the kids with college, and have a decent retirement. They did not have a bad life with her controlling the money - just a more predictable one. And in all other ways, they had trust. But like you - this wound was too deep to not require change in roles.

They've been married about 65 years and this arrangement holds. She controls the money... but it works for them.

FWIW - He still enjoys gambling - so they would still (a few times a year) go to the casino so he can play craps or black jack. She gives him $100, and they go home when he's lost it.

It doesn't have to end a marriage - but it might mean changing the financial control. It sounds like you're reacting similarly to this relative.

FWIW, for FinanceDude's sake, I'm a woman who's not saying to kick him to the curb.

FWIW, for FinanceDude's sake, I'm a woman who's not saying to kick him to the curb.

Thanks for that, this island was pretty lonely.........

__________________
Consult with your own advisor or representative. My thoughts should not be construed as investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results (love that one).......:)

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